Posted
by
CmdrTaco
on Tuesday December 21, 2004 @11:53AM
from the whats-going-down dept.

dantheman82 and others have submitted a number of links about the recent closure of torrent mega sites like suprnova and torrentbits.
The
Unofficial Suprnova Closure FAQ comments that some torrent site maintainers have been arrested and that Suprnova was closed over fear of similiar fate.
DeHavilland notes that the finnish police raided an unnamed torrent site. There's a lot of scary things here, but to me what is most scary is that American copyright owners can mobilize foreign police to do their bidding.

> There's a lot of scary things here, but to me what is most scary is
> that American copyright owners can mobilize foreign police to do their bidding.
This would be scary, if you think that taking sites down was not just and legitimate. I don't know the facts about finish rights, but under german right suprnova could have been shut down.
It's not always the US pushing and picking on people and maybe it is not in this case. At least I believe, that the finnish police made it's own independent decision.
With Indymedia It actually seemed to be some tougher mobilizing:http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/04/10/07/204217.shtml? tid=153&tid=219 [slashdot.org]
This may or may not be the case with suprnova.

At least I believe, that the finnish police made it's own independent decision.

That's what the Finnish police themselves say. What's interesting is that MPAA has been attempting to take the "credit" for the raid. Sure, everyone knows they are lying bastards, but one would expect them to pick lies that are not so easy to check...

First I will say that I am not interested in downloading the vast bulk of stuff out there - Its way less hassle just to hire the DVD or tape it off TV or whatever.

However I have always found the whole idea that just providing *links* (going right back to Napster) is some sort of criminal or civil offence.

Look at it this way. If you sell ripped off CDs or DVD at a market & get caught, thats a copyright offence - ok.

But if I just say to someone "I know of a guy in such-and-such a place that sells ripped off CDs or DVD " - should just providing that info (or link) an offence? So why just limit the principle to Copyright? Why not *ANY* sort of offence? If you provide a link (for whatever reason, and by this logic maybe even inadvertently) to a place that is engaged in some "illegal" activity, that becomes an offence, right?

Essentially we just end up with a situation of "legislation creep" where the bounds of law expand to such an extent that it is impossible to avoid breaking the law in some trivial way - and you can be arrested on the whim of the authorities.

And have you noticed the ever swelling prison populations (increasingly harvested as cheap/slave labour) around the world - UK, USA, maybe China..

It's probably somewhere in between. The MPAA tries to get everyone to take action when possible. If anyone does take action, regardless of whether they even read what the MPAA sends them, the MPAA takes credit and feels good about itself.

the main reason for Finnish police acting was donate button on their page, which made under finnish law, the copyright infrigment into copyright crime, since they were making money with piracy.
True that the money was spent on paying their expenses running the dedicated server abroad, but it was still income from distributing copyrighted material. Point being you're not allowed to receive any income or donations from illegal material or byproducts of such, no matter what your expenses are while getting the material.
You're allowed to download such material under current fair use laws for personal use, as long there's no intention for profit. The line of intention was crossed on this occasion because of the donate button.

This would be scary, if you think that taking sites down was not just and legitimate.

No, it's scary full-stop. The problem isn't that the sites were shut down, it's that police have been arrseting people. This should be a civil matter, not a criminal one. I was under the impression that copyright infringement was only a criminal matter in the USA - what are local police doing getting involved? It should be lawyer letters to their ISP, not people with guns coming to take you away.

So, it's been illegal to tape movies broadcast on television, all along? Illegal to tape radio? Illegal to copy your own VHS tapes?

Believe it or not, some things are illegal while others aren't. Recording a show off television for personal use was always legal and is still legal. This is why you can legally own a Tivo. Distributing copies of movies on a massive scale and getting moeny for it (as these advertising- and donation-driven sites are doing) was always illegal and still is. In the 1980's if you were selling pirated video cassettes or tapes on the streets of New York, you were doing something illegal and could be arrested. Today, if you are offering pirated movies or music online, that is a crime and you can be arrested. The fact that it is happening online does not magically change things. It would appear that it is you who can't remember the past. What these sites were doing has never been permitted.

Stealing can have many definitions. Rather than dealing with those definitions, lets examine the possible harm to the "victim" to see if any crime was committed.

1 - Did the vicitm actualy loose possession of the item in question? No, online piracy involves making a copy, not removing or destroying the origional. As a consequence, the copyright holder has not been deprived of any property.

2 - Did the victim loose some future benefit? While many would argue that piracy cuts into sales, the argument is f

How convenient for you to ignore the immorality of copyright, prohibition, or Jim Crow laws. Some of those laws were repealed(we're working on the rest) due to the "immorality" of the people who had the guts to tell the lawmakers and police to go to hell and to ignore or openly violate bad law. As one that's dependant on the status quo, you could hardly know or care who the bad guys really are. You just believe what the authorities tell you.

I note that you don't actually explain your position on what makes copyright immoral. Emotively mentioning prohibition and Jim Crow laws without actually explaining the relation just makes your argument nothing more than emotion-based piracy justification because you don'

I don't know the facts about finish rights, but under german right suprnova could have been shut down.

That's kind of funny, because under American law (yes the dreaded DMCA) suprnova was safe from lawsuits because it just acted like google as a clearing house for information and didn't actually run the trackers with infringing material.

under American law (yes the dreaded DMCA) suprnova was safe from lawsuits because it just acted like google as a clearing house for information and didn't actually run the trackers with infringing material.

Are you sure a judge wouldn't call it contributory infringement, relying on A&M v. Napster?

Under the DMCA, specifically the section 512(d), sets out the criteria under which the 'search engine ' examption applies. The following key points are worthy of note:

Section 512, paragraph (d),

A service provider shall not be liable... if the service provider:

part (1)(A) does not have actual knowledge that the material or activity is infringing;

(B) in the absence of such actual knowledge, is not aware of facts or circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent; or

(C) upon obtaining such knowledge or awareness, acts expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the material;

Thus, this can only apply if the site owners are never aware that the material they are indexing is infringing.

A simple look at the front page of Suprnova.org is enough to belie that.

If a site wished to claim 512(d) as a defense, they would have to demonstrate to the court that they did not know any of the material they indexed was infringing.

Now, there might be a defense, under the multiple layers of abstraction, in that Suprnova indexed.torrents, which were merely pointers to the infringing data. That's nothing like a 'I'm just a search engine like Google' defense, however.

Simple rule of thumb: If it's common knowledge that a site is were to look to find infringing materials, and is of little other use, 512(d) won't apply (on the grounds that it beggers belief that a site owner would have no grasp on _why_ so many people were using thier site).

Disclaimer: You're not paying for this, this is not legal advice. If you want legal advice, contact a lawyer in your juristriction.

None of these clowns ever manages to explain how they obtain rights that they haven't purchased and that no one has given them.

Hi, this is Bozo speaking for the United Federation of Clowns. I talked to the other clowns, the ones at the MPAA and RIAA, and they told me how to obtain rights by purchasing them from Congress. Unfortunately I am a few hundred million dollars short. What do you suggest I do?

If you wish to make the point that "copyright infringement" is less worse than "stealing", use your time to say *why*.

If I steal your CD, you no longer have it. I've deprived you of the use of your property.

If I copy your CD without your permission, YOU STILL HAVE IT. You've been deprived of *nothing*, except the highly speculative "loss" a sale (which presumes that I would have paid your asking price in the first place, and that I won't buy a "legitimate" copy later)

Checking a book out of the library and scanning the contents is fair use.

Capturing a song or TV show off the air neither stealing nor copyright infringement, it's fair use.

Giving away your fair-use copies CAN also be legal fair use as well in some circumstances; it can also be illegal copyright infringement in others. It is a legal grey area -- giving a copy to a relative is unquestionably OK. Giving a copy to 10 casual accquaintances is probably OK. Giving a copy to everyone in a class you are teaching might be OK. *SELLING* a copy is *NOT* OK.

Giving away your fair-use copies CAN also be legal fair use as well in some circumstances; it can also be illegal copyright infringement in others. It is a legal grey area -- giving a copy to a relative is unquestionably OK. Giving a copy to 10 casual accquaintances is probably OK. Giving a copy to everyone in a class you are teaching might be OK. *SELLING* a copy is *NOT* OK.

You almost had me, up until the paragraph quoted above. Unfortunately, your opinions sound very nice but they don't have much of anything to do with the law as it actually exists. [copyright.gov] In particular, your idea that selling a copy of something is the only clearly defined form of infringement is one of those hoary old fallacies that needs to go away, just like the story about mailing yourself a copy of a manuscript in a sealed envelope to "prove" copyright. They're nice wives' tales, but they just ain't fact.

"Fair use," in and of itself, is nowhere clearly defined in the copyright law, and its interpretation is largely left up to judges in individual cases. Whether or not a given case of suspected infringement constitutes Fair Use is determined on the basis of several factors, [copyright.gov] including the nature of the work infringed and the purpose for which it was copied.

I can assure you that several of the examples you cite are most certainly not Fair Use; checking a book out from the library does not give you the right to give a copy to a relative. ("Unquestionably"? Are you so naive you actually believe that?) And I certainly hope you don't teach any classes, because if you do, you might want to do a little bit of research before you find yourself in a mess of trouble with your boss. [ucop.edu]

When you copy a copyrighted work wgich requires payment for legal access to said work you are depriving the copyright owner(s) of the money that would have been generated by the sale of that item. Is that not theft?

No. It is copyright infringement.

When you copy your friend's CD you are not stealing from your friend,

Correct

you are stealing from the people who own the rights to the material contained on that CD.

Isn't it slightly ironic a site, outlining the demise of a site to enable IP violations, is worried about someone stealing their IP?

No it's not. Getting the word out that the 'official' FAQ is located at one address, then it's made known that other versions located elsewhere could be modified, changed, etc. I imagine there's a lot of disinformation flying around about this topic right now, and they want to make sure everyone knows where the proper resource is located.

Unfortunately, the timing of Suprnova and other torrent sites shutting down corresponds to the end of the fall term for most universities - so there is bound to be a decrease in internet and p2p traffic ANYWAY. I'm sure **AA will take credit for it anyway.

I work at a university and our traffic [uta.edu] seems to have remained about the same. The students tell me that most everything is blocked in the dorms, tho, so I'm not sure if we had much of a problem here anyway. But, yeah, here are some numbers.:)

I mean, c'mon. They were ostentatiously peddling links to illegal stuff. It was only a matter of time until the MPAA got its act together to scare these sites into shutting down, with little more than a threat. The submission of these sites (pun unintended) is what's scary.

But this has little to do with right and wrong and much more to do with balance of power. Those with money and infrastructure (MPAA is only an example) will do everything in their power to maintain control over profitable media. Are content producers being hurt by torrents? Marginally. I think a balance will be struck in the distant future where content providers and consumers interact directly, with publishers taking diminished (not eliminated) role. Half-Life 2 is an early example.

No, it's only about right and wrong. Balance of power is an excuse people give when they're too scared to do what they think is right. Whether or not the act is justified is what matters. Do you think the black civil rights leaders expected to be arrested? Of course they did. But they went ahead and protested anyway, because they knew they were right, and the rest of the country was wrong.

I'm not calling Sloncek a coward. He did a great service for the community for two years, and he should be commended fo

When people are stealing my stuff, I would do everything in my power to stop them whether I was a large company or a single individual.

The various Ass.'s of America are stealing MY STUFF. They are using the law to starve the public domain.

Given the corporatist nature of the American government, voting won't make a difference. The only way to have even a marginal effect on their actions is to do whatever I can to kill (bankrupt) them. Giving away their lifeblood for free is pretty much the only way t

Not exactly - the U.S. Constitution says that the U.S. Congress can allow you to temporarily restrict other people's use of the expression of ideas, for the purpose of promoting the progress of Science & the Arts.

It _doesn't_ say that you actually "own" the expression of those ideas - that's just the meme which has been encoded into laws by the special interests pushing for the corporate control of what should be a free-flowing exchange of ideas.

"There's a lot of scary things here, but to me what is most scary is that American copyright owners can mobilize foreign police to do their bidding."

Well, I'm not sure how it's scary. If I'm the owner of some digital item that has a copyright on it and some other country where copyrights are valid has people breaking it I hope the police would do something about it.

If I made a product that I put effort and thought into, and I could charge $100 for each, is it lawful if someone in another nation can steal my work and produce straight copies for $10 each, thereby bypassing the entire R&D costs, of which I'm stuck paying for myself as well as freeloaders? Other nations should not be havens for those who engage in the theft of other people's property. Would you argue against all extradition treaties as well?

If I made a product that I put effort and thought into, and I could charge $100 for each, is it lawful if someone in another nation can steal my work and produce straight copies for $10 each, thereby bypassing the entire R&D costs, of which I'm stuck paying for myself as well as freeloaders?

If that's the best option for the people of that foreign nation... then fuck yes. Laws have to stop somewhere. You can lobby your government to put pressure on that foreign government to sign trade agreements prohi

>is it lawful if someone in another nation can steal my work and produce straight copies for $10 each?

Actually, yes. According to the Constitution you have no right to exclusively market your product except what we give you because we think that allowing you this TEMPORARY monopoly may help us in the long run.

Due do bribes by Disney and a couple other evil corporations, these exclusive rights are being abused to the point where they are no longer good for the average Citizen at all, and therefore they

There is the issue of civil vs. criminal law. Police should not, IMHO, be involved in enforcing civil law to any greater extent than ensuring compliance with court orders (sheriffs or marshals accompanying people seeking to get property returned, for example, if violence is a reasonable possibility).

Until recently, copyright law in the US was a purely civil matter (I cannot speak for other nations). While I shed no tears for the sites that have shut down whether under actual or possible threat of litigation, I do object to using the police to enforce these kinds of things. They should be working on other things related to public safety, and even in the safe cities of Europe, I'm sure there are open cases, and even cold cases, that could be worked rather than sending them to do what the lawyers should be doing.

As Kaseijin states above, copyright infringement for financial gain is the criminal offense. If you make copies of the latest LotR DVD and start selling them, then you're breaking criminal law. If you make copies and pass them out, that's a civil matter.

Your point on homicide departments is a false dichotomy.

Furthermore, how would you feel if a crime were commited against you and the police told you that they had better things to do than arrest and charge the perpitrator(s)?

If they were violating my copyrights, then I wouldn't expect the police to go after them. I'd expect my lawyer to pursue them until the rights are restored and appropriate damages recovered. If my house or car is broken into, then I expect the cops to respond, but if they're busy cornering a murder suspect, then I'll cut them some slack because that's more important at the time.

Priorities matter. Getting police involved in copyright infringement cases that do not involve financial gain (or intent of financial gain, for those enterprises that go broke) is a misallocation of what are often scarce resources. There are thousands of unsolved murders, rapes and other assaults in Los Angeles, New York, Washington, Miami, and a hundred other major cities around the world. I'd rather resources be devoted to that.

Copyright infringement is now a criminal matter. It's criminal even without causing any economic harm. See the No Electronic Theft Act (NET Act) of 1997.

I'm not sure if you're aware of this, or arguing against it. Couldn't tell from your post. But the way it is now, if I burn a copyrighted CD and just plain give it to you, the FBI could make a federal case out of that.

And yeah it sucks. However it's completely predictable esp. considering that "IP" is pretty much all America manufacturers anymore. Well and food and cars. But IP has the biggest margins.

But the way it is now, if I burn a copyrighted CD and just plain give it to you, the FBI could make a federal case out of that.

NET Act, Section 2, Criminal Infringement, sub a:"(2) by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $ 1,000 shall be punished as provided under section 2319 of title 18

But the point is that in some of these cases, at least, no laws were being broken - not in the country of operation no, most likely in the US (although it's getting pretty tough not to break any laws there these days).

The MPAA et al are getting foreign law enforcement agencies to arrest people will little or no evidence that they've actually committed a crime in the coutry that they're being arrested.

That's like me ringing up the French police and demanding that they raid someone in France that I think might have some involvement in the unauthorised distribution of my "IP". I'd be laughed off the phone.

You can criticize the law all you want, I'm not about to debate the pros and cons of IP law on/. (hey, my karma has to be worth something), but the fact is copying protected works is illegal. Thus it is the job of the cops to enforce that law.

The job of cops is ultimately to act in the best interests of our society - that's what we have laws for in the first place. If we see our government acting as hired guns for whichever lobby group has the most cash, I would say we have a good reason to get pissed off.

I consider this to be a decent example of said phenomenon. As far as independent (non-RIAA-funded) studies can find, filesharing hasn't harmed the music industry at all. On a personal level, I can vouch for filesharing promoting quality - the

and despite of MPAA claims, it had absolutely nothing to do with the raid National Bureau of Investigation(KRP) made announcement that they(MPAA) were trying to fish off free publicity from their investigations, and had nothing to do with the shutdown

but to me what is most scary is that American copyright owners can mobilize foreign police to do their bidding.

To me, what is most scary is that people think they flaunt copyright laws on such a massive scale and get away with it.

Furthermore, this is exactly what should be happening: the government attacks those who break the law, rather than those who create the tools. Bit torrent and p2p applications have legal, useful purposes; by seeking those who use them in illegal ways rather than banning them altogther is appropriate, rather than trying to ban them.

Actually it has been reported that MPAA had NOTHING to do with the finnish raids. The KRP (Keskusrikospoliisi = FBI?) has publicly said that the MPAA has not been in contact with the finnish authorities. Here is a site [itviikko.fi] (in finnish) that says it all.

Basically, copying without intent towards financial gain is a misdemeanor, punishable (as a maximum) with fines. This on top of any civil liabilities.

Problem is, you can't get search warrants in such cases. The crime is too minor.

Police thinks in this case that they can prove a bigger crime (with intent towards financial gain). That remains to be seen.. as does the fact that can they nail the finreactor admins for actual distribution, or just for linking t

It sucks that they shutdown the web sites... but IRC will forever remain the unstoppable force when it comes to obtaining illegal files... whether it's FTP, or torrents... IRC will always have the info available...
Perhaps it's a good thing that the websites are being shutdown... Napster became too popular, killed the free MP3 system... The same thing happend to DirecTV and DISHNET... too easy for joe q. public to obtain pirated signals, again too popular...
If we keep the methods of obtaining illegal things difficult, it keeps the popularity down, and more or less off the radar screen...
Now I personally stopped pirating a while back... but my reasoning for it in the first place was the challenge... Now a days it's just a click here and a click there, and presto... what's the fun in that? I enjoyed the challenge more than the results... besides... 99% of the illegal stuff out there is GARBAGE anyways... and the stuff that isn't you need to purchase to actually use it...

There's a lot of scary things here, but to me what is most scary is that American copyright owners can mobilize foreign police to do their bidding

Generally, those "American copyright owners" are also the German copyright owners, and the French copyright owners, and the Japanese copyright owners, and the Russian copyright owners. About the only place they aren't the copyright owners is Gilligan's Island.

" Is a flawed business model not a legitimate concept? Would you prefer different wording?"

The phrase "flawed business model" is typically used on Slashdot to refer to a company that's taking action that's contrary to Slashdotters' interests. For example, bringing civil or criminal charges against a copyright violator, or releasing closed-source software, or not supporting Linux. The trouble is that declaring said company or industry to have a "flawed business model" appears to be a universal bromide,

Freenet is probably too slow to recreate a site like Suprnova, but how about this. Instead of using Freenet to distribute each individual torrent, could you publish on Freenet a torrent that contains other torrents? For instance, a torrent for each category of files, like what was on Suprnova - a "Movies-Drama" torrent that contained a zipped file of all torrents in that category? This way, you wouldn't be relying on Freenet to distribute every torrent file, just a much smaller index of torrents.

If somebody wanted to take ownership of this, they could create a Freenet page with an anonymous feedback form. When somebody has a torrent to publish, they could submit the info to the anonymous form, and then the publisher would compile all the new torrents into the next version of the index.

Uh huh - a _real_ capitalist would just laugh at the pharma industry at not being able to compete.

Uh, what capitalist business model that does not use intellectual property law can deal with a product that costs $2 billion to R&D (that is probably what is spent for each drug that makes it to market) and 5 cents per unit to manufacture and is commonly sold to maybe 1,000,000 unique people in a year?

Just to break even you have to get $2000 from each person on average. If competitors are allowed to und

Not really - unless you just call making a drug pressing out pills. There wouldn't be a flu shot shortage if people were falling over themselves to make it.

Ironically people were getting arrested for selling flu shots on the black market. The fact that a black market exists demonstrates that people are willing to pay more for the shots. Now, black markets for drugs aren't good due to quality issues, but if the legitimate market were allow

I've seen a lot of comments on this around "the internets" (yep, all of them;), and most of them seem to be of the "noooooo... not my warez! Come back!" variety. To me, though, the better question is where the line is drawn. When the sites that -link- to trackers that -allow- people to download -possibly illegal- files from -each other- get shut down, I get worried. How long will it be until any technology that is used for illegal deeds is at risk?

There's a lot of scary things here, but to me what is most scary is that American copyright owners can mobilize foreign police to do their bidding.

No, that's not the most scary thing. Many here will critisize the current incarnation of near perpetual copyright and many will critisize how the Big Media have treated that right--as well as their customers.

But to say that I -- as an American -- should not be able to protect a work of art/media across a foreign boundry is a pretty extremest view. And in my view, it would be quite harmful.

Remember the ability to create your own terms of an open source project is made possible only because the creator is GRANTING those rights to add, change and distribute source code. It's copyright that protects that code from just being taken by Microsoft without the company agreeing to contribute back to the project.

Copyright is also what protects some huge media corp from stealing a young artist's song without even "signing" him. They just take it and give it to Pop Artist #122b.

What scares ME is that this is an attack on the freedom of speech and information. SuprNova was linking to illegal media, but it wasn't hosting it. It should not be illegal to say where the red light district is and it shouldn't be illegal to point someone to one of the prostitutes.

> "There's a lot of scary things here, but to me> what is most scary is that American copyright> owners can mobilize foreign police to do their> bidding."> Perhaps dantheman82 needs to understand the> concept of international copyright law. Many> countries, including those in the story, have> agreements to enforce each other's copyrights.

I think it's more the fact that they can get the police in another country to shut down a copyright violator, whereas Joe Average can't get the police in their own country to catch the person who burgled him..

You gotta wonder why with all the crime, terrorism and other nasties all over he world, why SO MANY RESOURCES that could be used for more worthwhile things are used to increase the profits of the fat cats (in other words, make the fat cats even fatter). If I recall, the motion picture industry had a record year in 2003, and is on track to have 2004 be even better.

Yet, more people then ever before have no health insurance, more children then ever are starving, AIDS is running rampant all over Africa,
American kids are dying every day in Iraq because the govt. can't provide the proper armored vehicles, more Americans are homeless then ever before, people are having heart attacks from Aleve, gas and heating oil is almost twice what it was a year ago, and on and on.

What is America's response to this? To ignore all of the above and concentrate on such "important" things as busting movie and song 'pirates', drugs, and Janet Jackson's nipple.

You gotta wonder with all of the people dieing of cancer, why are peopel wasting time and money curing the common cold or alergies to cats? Don't they know that people are falling over dead?

Law enforcement is not about just concentrating on the worst offenders any more than medical research is restricted to just curing the most horrible of illnesses. ALL laws need to be enforced just as all illnesses need to be cured.

None of your other arguments have anything to do with enforcement of any laws and are irrelevant in this discussion.

Please try and pull your head out of your ass and take a realistic look at the world around you.

There's a lot of scary things here, but to me what is most scary is that American copyright owners can mobilize foreign police to do their bidding.

Did you miss out on the CIA campaigns of assassination in the 1960's and 1970's? If the US government can mobilize foreign coups d'etat to snuff the democratically-elected leftist leaders of nascent democracies, then taking down a bunch of pimply-faced warez monkeys is neither surprising nor newsworthy.

I don't know where Linus wrote his code, but let's say most of it was in Finland. Now, if somebody was breaking his copyright (by e.g. not complying with the holy GPL) in the US, would US police react? Would it be "scary that [Finnish] copyright owners can mobilize foreign police to do their bidding."?

The day companies manage to prosecute people for violating foreign laws, I'm worried. But this is local law enforcement acting according to local law, and is exactly how the judicial process is supposed to work (that those laws might be bad, is a problem with the legislators, not the police).

As for suprnova not violating copyright law, feel free to go there and take over. I'm sure they'll let you run it on your liability. Test your faith in slashdot pseudo-lawyering and take a stand.

I'm sure this will get mod'd a troll or flamebait, but let's face it. These torrent sites may of not of been hosting copyrighted information, but they were definately providing people the means to download copyrighted content without paying for it; often against their local laws.

I have hard time pittying them trying to make money by selling ads while trying to help others to break the law. Note that "helping someone break the law" is generally considered an "accomplice" which is illegal in many countries. Not to mention trying to profit from such assitance often incurs additional penalties.

The reality is that they knew they were helping people break the law and they tried to rub the noses of the RIAA/MPAA/etc in it and their bluff was called.

Honestly, if these sites contained a significant percentage of torrents for works which could be freely shared (freeware, BSD, GPL'd, software, etc) then I'd be upset at their closure. But at least 95% of the torrents were for porn, games, movies, music, etc for which the creater wishes to be paid for.

I agree with most people's opinion though, all this means is that someone will come up with some new P2P technology that either decentralizes the indexes or allows them to hide (freenet or tor anyone?)

So how come we don't see torrent search engines popping up in safer locations, like Havenco [havenco.com]? The MPAA would literally have to hire mercenaries to take down the server, and there's a pretty good chance that Havenco has spent a little money on defending Sealand from attacks like this.

Because havenco specializes in hosting secret (aka not public) sites that store potentially controversial things. I believe they buy their bandwidth from countries in europe. All it takes is enough complaints to havenco's provider to get their net connection pulled, they aren't immune to that.

I wholeheartedly agree. This is a very good thing for Developing Nations. But these sites are not in Developing nations.

But, you might also be forgetting that the majority of the traffic to these torrent sites is coming from the US, and one of the main reasons these sites are in other countries is to escape US copyright laws. IF these sites WHERE in developing nations and only catering to those developing nations, I wouldn't see much of a problem problem with that at all.

The "stealing" concept probably derives from the loss of income a IP holder sustains due to the fact that no one is going to BUY from them what they can download for free. Their property hasn't exactly been stolen as we all know digital content is non-exhaustible. But their INCOME has been STOLEN.

Of course for people who don't want to acknowledge that things in this world cost money thats an extremely difficult concept to grasp.

...is that governments (ineffective and beurocratic) is being shafted by multi-national corporations (insensitive and protective). You might not notice it as much in the US, which is a fairly large country, but smaller countries do. You think Wal-Mart is screwing US companies around? Try being a small country, who gets essentially blackmailed "Hmmm should we place this in your country, or your neighbour? What's your offer?"

All the trade organizations are against world government because it would rival thei

It depends what you think government is there to do and what its goal is.

Is it to facilitate leaps in humankind (eg: NASA, the Internet, modern avionics) all started out as federal projects. If these were brought down to the local level, their simply wouldn't be enough resources to arrange the Apollo project for example.

If, however, you think it is to arrange healthcare, education, waste collection and similar, then your approach is probably better.

Kojo Annan worked for Cotecna, *In Nigeria*, and left before Cotecna had the Iraq contract. He had deferred comp (like Cheney has from Haliburton), but has done no work for them since.

How did Cotectna get the contract - string pulling, right? WRONG. The previous contract holder was Lloyd's Register. Lloyds left on almost no notice, leaving all inspections of goods held up until a new company could be found. An incredibly short bidding period was consequently given, and whatever companies bidded had to be able to start work immediately. As a result, and due to the very limited number of inspection companies, only one company offered a bid; Cotecna. When you have only one bid and all good shipments into a country of over 20 million people are held up until a contract is granted, the choice is obvious.

Furthermore, OFF did not benefit Saddam to the tune of 23 billion dollars. Kickbacks through OFF contractors are estimated at around 5 billion dollars; the rest (of which the amount is controversial; some US investigations have said only 5 billion) are from oil smuggling, which is outside the scope of OFF.

FURTHERMORE, OFF's 661 committee, which was in charge of blocking contracts, had absolutely no authority to either investigate companies for giving kickbacks to the Iraqi government, or to block them even if it knew about this. Their charter authority was only to block banned items from getting to Iraq. There was a body that could block contracts, but it wasn't an OFF body: it was the UN security council. I.e., *our government* could have investigated and blocked contracts (it only took one government). It didn't. The 661 committee actually complained about suspected kickbacks to the security council; it didn't act.

Also, you seem unaware of how kickbacks work. The kickbacks aren't kickbacks to the company; they're kickbacks to the Iraqi government. In order to get the contracts, the company would have to raise their prices. On paper, the company would have been making a much larger profit as a consequence, but in reality they were only paid for what they initially would have charged, and the Iraqi government would get the extra money. Kickbacks are almost standard in many 3rd world countries, but Iraq was just a particuly sensitive case.

Next: Your claim that Kofi is ineffective, and that you think the world will cheer when he's gone. Well, lets just do a quick search:

"Kofi Annan and Pope John Paul Top the List of Most Popular World Leaders in Five Largest European Countries"http://www.harrisinteractive.com/news/ allnewsbydat e.asp?NewsID=821

"Person of the Week: Kofi Annan
For turning the fight against AIDS into a world war and for his popular reelection as U.N. Secretary General, Kofi Annan is our Person of the Week" (many more details about his tenure follow)http://www.time.com/time/pow/article/0,85 99,165905,00.html

Whole bunch of links related to him, his policy platforms, and why he's so popular in the world (outside America)http://www.globalpolicy.org/secgen/

Lastly, for Reagan. You claim:"... used the proceeds to fund essentially anti-Communists during the Cold War"

Go read a summary of what the contra war was like, for starters.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contras (general summary)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_t he_America s (used to train the contras, among others)http://www.icj-cij.org/icjwww/icases/inus/inus_iju dgment/inus_ijudgment_toc.htm (world court judgement against the US)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Negroponte (covered up abuses in Honduras so that we could train Contras there)http://www.wakeupmag.co.uk/articles/cia5.

Contributory infringement and vicarious liability are court-created theories (i.e., not specified in the Copyright Act) designed to hold a company liable for its participation in unlawful copying. The theory is analogous to the getaway driver in a robbery; everyone knows that the person who drives the getaway car will be in trouble, even if he does not rob the store. The imposition of secondary or indirect liability [1] is common thro